Cornwall Council has splashed out £7 million on a new business system to streamline internal services such as finance and purchasing.
The Council signed the agreement with IT systems provider Capgemini UK plc, in a move that it hopes will save £20 million over the next five years.
The Capgemini Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, based on Oracle software, will replace the largely paper-based processes that Cornwall Council inherited from the old county and district councils.
Michael Crich, Cornwall Council’s corporate director of resources, said: “The ERP system and new business processes will make an enormous difference to the way we work. At present we have staff across the organisation processing the same types of paperwork in different ways using the various systems that belonged to the old councils. Because many processes are manual, there can be double or even triple handling.
“Things are overly complex and time consuming. The old systems weren’t designed for an organisation the size of Cornwall Council, are very out of date and were scheduled for replacement several years ago.”
The Capgemini UK team implementing the new system will be based at County Hall.
